A Claybourne Christmas
by Sarsel
Summary: Secret Santa Story. Rayna and Deacon struggle to make their first Christmas together special for the girls.


Author's Note: This is a response to the Secret Santa exchange. This one is for Shiny Jewel and her prompt "Write about a Christmas tradition Rayna and Deacon start with the girls" Thank you to KarenES for the fantastic Betareading and support.

A good deal of inspiration for the second half of this story game from (Google 1122craterhill) although I made several changes. Enjoy the pictures there to get a better visual if you'd like. I'm particularly fond of the aerial shot showing the back half of the house.

Thank you everyone. Enjoy the story and have a Happy Christmas.

-Kristy

They'd been looking at houses for almost three months and Deacon was dizzy with how many times they'd gone around in circles. Four or five bedrooms, minimum three bathrooms and on a big enough piece of property to protect their privacy. Nothing too grand or elaborate. Recording studio optional. Somehow a simple list had exploded in their faces.

It started pretty simply. Rayna was strutting through a bright brick house in Green Hills, where the fireplace looked like the one at Deacon's house and the kitchen had the same warm wood as her $20 million dollar house in Belle Meade. She followed Deacon out on to the back porch.

"Whatcha thinkin'?" he asked, looking at her sideways to evaluate her mood.

Rayna was silent for a minute, her lips were pursed and when she did speak everything seemed perfectly reasonable. They were never going to buy the first house they looked at.

"I can see the neighbour's house through that tree. The house just feels, I guess, a bit cramped on the lot." She sighed. "You know babe, I think we might have to write off any place that isn't at least an acre."

That was only the start of it. She'd written off houses for the size of the ground level bathroom and because she didn't like the look of a sunken living room. She dismissed two places because she didn't like the paint colours and considered his suggestions that rooms could be repainted as irrelevant. The ceilings were too high or not high enough. There were too many windows or too few or they were too small. One house was dated and another was plain. The most ridiculous days were when she walked out of a house saying it was too dramatic or stylized or flashy.

Deacon watched her very carefully after the first time she launched into a tirade about a house being "too much" of anything. Her last house was certainly welcoming and comfortable for all that it had a massive swimming pool, two formal dining rooms and stone pillars two stories high, inside and out. What he saw now as they walked through the occasional white walled modernist houses and gated community monstrosities was that Rayna barely looked at the houses.

Her mind was somewhere else as they trailed after the realtor and the only times her eyes truly focused was when she would shoot him sly glances, trying to read his reaction.

It was the second weekend in November when they left the house off of Woodmont and Deacon just kept driving. The house had been nice, not overly dramatic and while they kept looking at pricier and pricier places, this one hadn't made either of them wince. Rayna still could only shake her head at the realtor and launch into a brief but scathing list of things that they either desperately needed or were complete deal breakers. She was silent when she got into the car though, and instead of continuing her tirade, she turned on the radio and stared out the window.

Deacon didn't think she heard a word of the song playing or even noticed where he was taking them until he crossed the bridge and parked the SUV.

Rayna shot him a look but he didn't meet her eyes, just got out of the car and hopped the wall and reached back to help her down after him. They sat on the picnic bench wrapped in their coats and holding their ungloved hands.

As they sat there, Deacon said a lover's prayer that the good lord had made him a patient man. He and Rayna never would have survived each other or their time apart if he hadn't been.

There was a good long stretch of silence before Rayna spoke. "I don't like any of these houses." She made it sound like some secret confession.

Deacon couldn't help but chuckle. "You don't have to tell me that darlin'. Or the realtor. You're certainly not one of her favourite people right now." He looked over at her and she met his eyes. "You regrettin' this?"

"No!" Rayna shook her head emphatically, not pulling her eyes from his. "I'm not regretting any of our choices but when we made this plan I just kind of thought it would come together a bit easier, you know?" Deacon had to smile at that too. Rayna was seldom naive, but that could have been a statement about a whole lot more than their plans to buy a house together.

"We're still in the same boat we were in over the summer," she continued. "I can't live with you in your house because there's not enough room for the girls. We can't live in my house because there's a whole lot of history and hurt feelings we don't need to dig up. I'm not marrying you one day and then not having a place that's ours the next." Rayna's eyes were filled with turmoil.

Deacon nodded. "No house, no wedding." He'd agreed to that plan and it still felt like the right one. "Startin' to feel to me though Ray, that you're puttin' the brakes on the house, maybe to slow down the other thing." He made it sound like a question and not an accusation but his eyes demanded an answer regardless.

Rayna was silent after he said that, though he could see that she wanted to dispute his statement right away. Deacon watched her face as she thought hard about what to say next. Jesus, she was beautiful and he was a lucky fool to have her.

"It's not that," she finally answered, staring into the creek. "What I want is to have a warm, loving home for my daughters. I want it to be our home: yours, mine and theirs. I want us all to wake up Christmas morning and be a family. I want it to feel perfect." Rayna's voice hitched on the word perfect.

Deacon wrapped his arm around her. "What do you mean by perfect Ray? As far as everyone's concerned we're already a family. It doesn't matter where we live. Were you already upset about Christmas morning back in August?" Deacon let the teeniest bit of incredibility seep into his tone.

Rayna took a deep breath but didn't say anything, just snuggled her shoulder deeper into Deacon. Eventually she forced the words out.

"I know we're a family and I know I'm probably being silly but Teddy and Peggy are all settled in and married and in their place. They'll have the girls the whole week before Christmas and then we only get them for Christmas day and…" Rayna started to ramble. She took another deep breath to fight off the tightness in her chest. One look at Deacon's soft brown eyes and she knew she could go deeper and tell him the truth.

"When I was pregnant with Maddie…" Rayna's voice was much softer. "Hell, that whole first year. I didn't know how to be a parent. I didn't know what to do with a baby or how to raise a person or give her a good childhood. I didn't know a thing about turning an organized pile of construction materials into the kind of home Maddie deserved. I knew how to live on the road and wash my underwear in a tour bus sink. I knew how to stay up until 6 A.M. dancing or writing songs." She smiled weakly up at Deacon, as most of those nights had been with him.

"Christmas means so much to kids and I just didn't know how to do it. I couldn't remember any especially fun traditions with Daddy and I didn't have my Momma to ask for help and I was so scared that I wasn't going to be a good Momma."

She couldn't look at Deacon during the next part of this confession.

"And Teddy just seemed to know how to do all of it. He made it seem easy. I knew before we got married how good a father he would be and I think I really needed that. I needed him to be amazing at it in case I was barely adequate." Rayna gripped her hands together in her lap and stared down at them.

Deacon's eyes started to burn and he blinked away the cold and felt tears tease the corners of his eyes. All he heard at first was that she married Teddy because he was a better father than he would have been. Then his ears caught up with his heart and he saw Rayna's pain and what he'd put her through; what life had put her through.

Rayna couldn't meet Deacon's eyes but she prayed that his usual self debasement didn't make him miss the fact that this was a personal doubt she would have suffered through no matter what. In retrospect, she may have preferred to stumble through parenting with Deacon, both of them lost at sea and finding their way together. But without him, she'd given her insecurities about parenthood free rein. The fact that she'd been the parent to go off on a ten month tour every few years, and not see the girls sometimes for two months straight, while Teddy packed every school lunch, hadn't helped heal up that wound.

The silence didn't linger long before Deacon reassured her she was a great mom and that the girls loved her and would never be upset if Christmas didn't happen in the new house.

"I know," she said, in a voice that said her heart wasn't totally convinced. "We just started looking at houses and we had so much time to decide and I tried to picture the four of us in each place on Christmas morning and I just couldn't do it." Deacon pulled her deep into his embrace and Rayna tucked her nose into his sweater. When she spoke again her voice was tight and she sounded like nothing so much as a tearful child.

"I want to marry you as soon as possible. I'm not trying to put that off. I just don't know how to rebuild a home from scratch for my babies." After that there was no more talking, just the two of them holding each other for a long while.

Eventually the cold drove them back to the truck and back to Deacon's house. With hot coffees in their hands and their legs entwined on the couch, Deacon brought up another suspicion. "Why don't you ever like any of the fancier places we look at? Seems like you're not even payin' attention to some of them." Rayna looked guilty when she replied.

"I don't want us in any house that you don't like Deacon. It's your home too. It's supposed to be our home."

Deacon thought this through for a second. "Baby, how about you don't go makin' up my mind for me about what I do and don't like in a house. Home is wherever you and the girls are hangin' your hats. Also, I'm a big boy who can say out loud whether I hate a house or not."

He looked at her directly and dropped his voice to a lower drawl . "Besides, I was kinda lookin' forward to having twenty different rooms to screw you in. Thought we might start with goin' through them all once and then start all over again." He leaned across the couch and kissed her sweetly, tasting her smile.

Soon hands joined lips and Deacon was slowly tracing his fingers along Rayna's ribs, while she grazed her nails gently through his hair. Rayna pulled him tighter against her by the belt loops. Deacon held her chin in place as his mouth retreated and he slid his damp lips against hers before diving back into her depths.

Rayna didn't think she could ever live without this again. Sex with Deacon had always been special and nothing made it sweeter or so damn fucking hot than the realization of how deeply and truly they belonged to one another. How much they trusted one another. The ways that they made themselves a gift to each other.

She wasn't sure if it was because they were so young when they got together, or how they'd spent untold hours together, talking about feelings and pouring their souls out to each other with lyrics and chords. Twenty six years and the most potent aphrodisiac either of them knew was a conversation from the heart and the look in each other's eyes.

Time had taught them the infinite variety they were capable of and just how good the difference between fast and slow was. With that thought in both their minds, they spent a small eternity touching and tasting and very, very gently grinding before clothing started to disappear between them. When Rayna's warm naked back made unpleasant contact with the leather couch she began to angle herself towards the floor, pulling Deacon down on top of her.

Later, when they had made it off the floor and to Deacon's bed, they started to form a new plan of attack.

"How about," Deacon suggested, "the next time we're looking at a house, you stop thinking about what Teddy and Peggy are doin' and what Christmas morning is going to look like and try thinkin' about this." He leaned over to press a kiss to her shoulder. "Think about whether you can imagine me makin' us all pancakes in the kitchen or how good the acoustics are in the livin' room. The rest will fall into place." And with that, another unpleasant ghost of their past was let go. Rayna curled into his embrace and thanked God that she fell in such love with a poet who knew her so completely.

Christmas Eve

Sometimes trying to make decisions in your life was like trying to drive with vaseline smeared all over your windshield. Someone in a meeting had said that once, and it had stuck with Deacon. If you're not seeing yourself and your emotions and your habits clearly, how can you really get anywhere?

Within a week of clearing up what had been stopping Rayna from committing to a house, they had toured four places, two new ones and two they had previously dismissed. A week after that, they'd put in an offer and had it accepted. They took possession of an almost modest-looking large, older house on two acres of property filled with spindly grey trees and a landscaped firepit in the back yard perfect for sitting around with guitars. The main floor and the top floor both had balconies looking out over a view of trees facing north and the main living room had the best-looking fireplace Deacon had ever seen.

The house was large but didn't feel like a museum of any kind. It had big windows, but dark wood and grey stone walls. It had rooms where Deacon could close his eyes and already hear Daphne laughing and Maddie playing guitar. It had a basement wine cellar that they had already decided to convert into a recording studio. It had a steep spiral staircase in the master suite that Deacon had chosen to be the very first place he wanted to see Rayna naked in their new home.

Deacon had struck a deal with the moving company: They would unload the boxes and furniture on Christmas Eve, but they didn't have to worry about unpacking a single thing or arranging furniture, so that they could all have an early day off. They'd come back on the 27th and move couches and bookshelves and beds wherever Rayna wanted them, but none of that was going to be necessary tonight.

When Rayna went to pick up the girls from Teddy's, Deacon unloaded a small Christmas tree from his truck and set it up in the living room where it was surrounded by labelled boxes. Then he grabbed three large, wrapped gifts and placed them under the undecorated tree. The movers had set aside four boxes labelled "Christmas" so that they could decorate the tree tonight without digging through the two million or so boxes it took to pack up their previous homes.

By the time the girls arrived at their new home, Deacon had his guitar out and was playing old Christmas songs he thought they might all try out together.

Daphne came screeching into the living room. "Deacon!" she yelled, sohe put the guitar down and caught her in a hug. Maddie and Rayna were close behind. Maddie smiled easily and walked into his arms, clearly delighted that her family was slowly being put together.

"Can we pick out our bedrooms?" Maddie asked excitedly as the hug ended. Daphne looked up from her inspection of the three identical gifts under the tree. "We get to choose?" She squealed and ran straight over to Rayna who was setting her suitcase down beside the girls'.

"You sure can. We've got a couple suggestions for you though." Rayna had to raise her voice as Daphne was already up the stairs to go lay her claim. "The master bedroom is already spoken for, so don't go getting greedy Daph."

Maddie reluctantly started moving to follow her sister, sure if she didn't she would be blocked from having the best room.

"Hold on young lady," said Deacon. "We've got some suggestions you might want to hear before you go tryin' to fight your sister for a good room." Maddie was suspicious, but encouraged by the smile on Deacon's face. The giddy look in her Mom's eyes confirmed that something awesome was about to happen.

"What?" Maddie asked with a shy smile.

Rayna couldn't hold it in much longer and wrapped an arm around her eldest's shoulders. "Well," she drawled. "Since you're turning 15 this year, we thought we'd give you a couple of teenager perks." Maddie could take one of the two remaining rooms upstairs with an ensuite or she could take a bedroom downstairs from the main floor that opened up on to the back yard and came with a separate living room and bathroom.

"Now you wouldn't actually have the full floor to yourself," Rayna explained, while Maddie looked at her with wide unbelieving eyes. "We're putting a recording studio below you in the basement eventually and probably using the large open sitting room on your floor as an entertaining space since it's the main way to get to the back yard. And while we're trying to give you a little more privacy, you're not going to be able to keep your sister out of your little apartment down there all the time." Maddie's face burst with excitement at the word "apartment" and Rayna looked just as happy and squealed with her daughter in delight when Maddie threw herself into another hug.

"Seriously though," Rayna continued. "Watch out if you think Daphne is feeling all lonely upstairs, okay?" Maddie solemnly nodded as her hurricaine of a sister came back downstairs saying she'd picked her room and it was fantastic and bright and the green one down at the end of the left hallway.

Deacon piped in. "And remember the rest of us who live here too, all right. We'd like to see you now and then too." He smiled and Maddie grinned right back, promising not to become a hermit.

With critical bedroom decisions made, Rayna glanced around the living room at what Deacon had set up. "What's all this, babe?" she asked.

It wasn't the first time today that Deacon had been nervous about his plan but he was never one to have stage fright so he soldiered on.

"Well since no one had picked rooms yet and we don't have any beds set up, I had an idea about how we might spend Christmas Eve. Would any of you ladies like to open a present?" he asked with his most charming smile.

The response he received was one of the most beautiful moments he'd seen in a long time. It wasn't often that anyone got to see just how much of Daphne's enthusiasm and natural glee came from Rayna. All three of his girls raced to the tree and lifted tags to see which of the three boxes was for them.

Rayna had the paper torn off her gift in seconds and Daphne and Maddie were seconds behind. Out of each box came a new sleeping bag, sleeping pad, a mug and set of flannel pyjamas.

"I was thinking we could start our first night in this house havin' a sleepover out here with the Christmas tree. I've got hot chocolate stuff for later and all the Christmas decorations. We've also got a whole house to explore." Deacon took a deep breath and hoped his plan was well received.

It felt a little strange giving Rayna flannel pyjamas and a sleeping bag for Christmas. He dearly hoped she was impressed by his intentions and that the girls wouldn't find a night without computers or TV boring. He'd been real lucky to be able to forge a relationship with Maddie as her father while she was on her best behaviour with him. He could also appreciate that the times over the past year when she had pushed back against him were part of her starting to trust him as a parent. Right now though, he knew he was one bad, hormonal, teenage moment away from being crushed.

Rayna couldn't force a smile right away as she watched Deacon being brave. She was too busy fighting back tears. She was so incredibly happy and moved that she couldn't find words for how much she loved him. When she did pull it together and looked at her daughters, her smile wasn't forced, but it did look a little teary. "That sounds pretty perfect to me. What do you girls think?"

The excited chirps of their daughters soothed the last bit of doubt and Deacon almost cried in relief himself. He got down on the floor beside Rayna and they found each other's arms while Maddie and Daphne pulled their new sleeping bags out and set up their beds.

Later that night, the Christmas tree had been decorated, frozen pizza eaten for dinner with hot chocolate, the house thoroughly inspected by both girls and a mountain of presents had been unloaded from Deacon's truck and put under the tree. The family of four found themselves tucked into sleeping bags around the tree. There had been two guitars and four voices echoing through the unfurnished rooms for hours before a sleepy silence descended. The last chirps of conversation faded when Daphne fell asleep and if Maddie wasn't out too, she was keeping it to herself.

Deacon and Rayna had zipped their sleeping bags together on top of a queen-sized air mattress. Rayna asked while setting it up if Deacon had ambitions of camping trips when summer came and he cheekily replied that he still hadn't gotten her out on a canoe.

As they lay there together, looking at their family under the lights of the Christmas tree, Rayna could not fathom how lucky she was. She had two amazing daughters and Deacon, who was able to surprise her even after thirty years. She still felt the sting that maybe they could have been each other's partner and built their family together earlier, but the magic of watching her daughters sleep while Deacon curled himself around her was too beautiful to leave room for sorrow. This may have even been the first Christmas when she didn't lament that her girls had grown up so fast. This wouldn't have been possible if Daphne was a year or two younger and still believing in Santa Claus.

Eventually Rayna couldn't fight to keep her eyes open any longer and sighed as she drifted closer to sleep. Deacon's arms shifted around her gently.

"I love you," she heard him say softly by her ear.

"I love you too." she replied. Then, just before she sank into slumber she had one last thought. "We should do this again next Christmas"


End file.
